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Everything was leveled, there were no extremes of joy or sorrow any more but only habit, routine, ancient family names and rites and customs, slow careful old people moving cautiously around furniture that had sat in the same positions for fifty years.

Anne Tyler

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Anne Tyler
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: October 25
Librarian
Novelist
Short Story Writer
Writer
Minneapolis
Minnesota
Years
Habit
Customs
People
Joy
Routine
Leveled
Position
Extremes
Cautiously
Names
Fifty
Rites
Family
Slow
Rite
Moving
Careful
Positions
Around
Ancient
Furniture
Everything
Sorrow
Sat

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People always call it luck when you've acted more sensibly than they have.
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Just because we're related doesn't mean we are any good at understanding each other.
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Bravest thing about people is how they go on loving mortal beings after finding out there's such a thing as dying.
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Try Jesus, you won't regret it, a billboard read.
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Isn't a memorial service meant to comfort the living?
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My family can always tell when I'm well into a novel because the meals get very crummy.
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It is not how much you love someone, but who you are when you are with him.
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No couple buying wedding rings wants to be reminded that someday one of them will have to accept the other one's ring from a nurse or an undertaker.
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For my own family, I would always choose the makeshift, surrogate family formed by various characters unrelated by blood.
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My stories are never quite good enough
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I think I was born with the impression that what happened in books was much more reasonable, and interesting, and real, in some ways, than what happened in life.
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I've always enjoyed studying the small clues that indicate a particular class level.
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I just want to be told a story, and I want to believe I'm living that story, and I don't give a thought to influences or method or any other writerly concerns
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It's true that writing is a solitary occupation, but you would be surprised at how much companionship a group of imaginary characters can offer once you get to know them.
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The Amateur Marriage grew out of the reflection that of all the opportunities to show differences in character, surely an unhappy marriage must be the richest.
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People imagine that missing a loved one works kind of like missing cigarettes,' he said. 'The first day is really hard but the next day is less hard and so forth, easier and easier the longer you go on. But instead it's like missing water. Every day, you notice the person's absence more.
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It seems to me that since I've had children, I've grown richer and deeper. They may have slowed down my writing for a while, but when I did write, I had more of a self to speak from.
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It’s like the grief has been covered over with some kind of blanket. It’s still there, but the sharpest edges are .. muffled, sort of. Then, ever now and then, I lift the corner of the blanket just to check, and .. whoa! Like a knife! I’m not sure that will ever change.
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The very thing that attracts you to someone can end up putting you off.
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He wished he had inhabited more of his life, used it better, filled it fuller.
Anne Tyler